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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2021-03-23 TranscriptionPage 1 2. Melrose Court Sewer Improvements — Resolution approving project manual and estimate of cost for the construction of the Melrose Court Sewer Improvements Construction Project, establishing amount of bid security to accompany each bid, directing City Clerk to post notice to bidders, and Fixing time and place for receipt of bids. 1. Public Hearing (Deferred from 3/16/21) Teague: I'm going to open the public hearing. And staff presentation please! Welter: Looks like my screen share is disabled. Can I get screen sharing? Perfect! Hello, I'm Joe Welter. I'm a Senior Engineer in the Engineering Division and I'm going to be talking about the Melrose Court Sewer Project today. So this project is ... uh, about four and a half years in the making. It was originally planned as a sanitary sewer replacement project. The design started in November of 2016. We had a public meeting March of 2018. I think it's important to mention that this project started as a sanitary sewer replacement project. It was not meant to be a complete street reconstruction project, but as we looked at the design constraints, as we looked at the corridor, as we listened to public comments, and we found other information that we discovered as the design progressed. The project got more complicated and, um ... and we had to adjust the design to ... to adjust to the parameters that we found. So the project is located, uh, Melrose Court, which is, um, a couple blocks away from, uh, southeast of Kinnick Stadium and it's immediately south of the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. This project involved replacing an existing sanitary sewer pipe, which is a 16 -inch, uh, 6 -inch pipe with a new 8 -inch and (mumbled) PVC pipe. The existing pipe and the proposed pipe are pretty much running straight down the center of Melrose Court. Existing pipe has sags in it and dips in it. Uh, the discharge pipes from the area were constructed in the late 1800s or early 1900s, so it's a very old sewer line that's going through here. The location of the sewer and the sags in the sewer really prohibited us from doing, uh, rehabilitation, like lining the pipe or doing, uh, trenchless, uh, installation of the pipe. And so really ended up with, um, process of basically having to dig up the whole corridor to get at the pipe, take out the old pipe, and put in a new pipe, and so it was trench work that needs to be done. There will be new sanitary sewer services that will be installed from the edges of the right-of-way to the edges of the easement. And ... we will, uh, and we're relocating, um ... we're relocating, uh, two of the discharge pipes that previously went under a building on the 220, 222 Melrose Court property. These two pipes, uh, bisect that property and go underneath the building, the house, and so this project looks to move those into a permanent easement. It's better for the property and the building, and it'll be easier to access, maintain, and repair the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 2 public sanitary sewer and storm sewer in the future. The storm sewer's also being improved on the north half of the project corridor. We are upsizing and changing the material of the storm sewer. So we're going from 12 -inch pipe to a 15 -inch pipe. There'll be a new outlet, which'll all be, uh, concrete, precast concrete, the intakes and the ... the outlet. There'll also be an additional storm sewer intake, which'11 help alleviate some of the flooding that has been reported in the backyards of these properties. The existing right-of-way is only 25 -feet wide. That's extremely narrow. If you think about a new street that we would construct in a subdivision, that would be 26- or 28 -feet wide. So a new street in a new subdivision would already be wider than this entire right-of-way is. And so we are forced with trying to figure out what to do with that, and so we're ... we're putting back in a 25 -foot wide street and a 5 -foot wide sidewalk, so we're ... we're paving from right-of-way line to right-of-way line. Where we disturb and where we remove, uh, driveways and within the easements we will be putting in new driveway, driveway aprons, and ... and the driveway pavement. The storm sewer will discharge into the, uh, edge of, uh, the ... in between the 223 and 331 Lucon Drive... location. We received a lot of public comments before this meeting, as well as, uh, earlier in the project about relocation of power lines underground. (mumbled) like everyone to know that this was evaluated. This would be our preference to ... to do that, and City staff looked at this. Um, in 2016 dollars, when this was evaluated, the relocation of the power lines, off of the poles and underground, was, uh, approximated by Mid American at the time as $160,000 that the City of Iowa City would need to pay. The removal of the aerials from the houses and the relocation of the pedestals and transformer boxes was roughly another $90,000 and so when we had originally budgeted this project at $300,000, another $250,000 on top of that is ... is roughly doubling the cost of the project. Um ... what we're doing with this project does not precli... preclude us from relocating those power lines underground in the fixture. We received a lot of comments, especially during the casement process, as well as during other times in the design process about the ability of residents to get in and out of their prof... properties during this... project. Um, because of the fact that we're basically tearing out the roadway and replacing the roadway and... and it is going to be a fairly disruptive project because of the narrowness of the right-of-way, and so we have worked with the consultant and we'll be working with the contractors as they bid on this, and the eventual awarded contractor. (mumbled) divided this project up into eight phase... eight phases, and this is intended to mini... minimize disruption to the residents, and so the contractor will be required to maintain access to the driveways throughout construction. We communicated this, um, quite frequently during the acquisition, the temporary construction easement process, that ... uh, for those residents and those owners of properties that were advocating for their ...for their tenants, that we would be working with the This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 3 contractor to maintain that access. So at times this might be over gravel. It won't always be over pavement, and it will take some coordination and some patience on the everyone's part. Contractor will be in charge of getting the vehicles in and out of their construction area. At times residents will need to wait. The contractor may need to move some equipment, they (mumbled) finish up something that they're doing, and so ... um ... so ... so we just want to communicate we're doing everything we can to try to minimize that disruption to the residents. This is our schedule and costs. The bid opening, uh, will be .... we bumped that back a week since this public hearing got bumped back a week. Um, so April 13th will be that. We intend to start in the beginning of May, have substantial completion done before the football season kicks off. This is right ... very close to Kinnick Stadium, and a lot of, uh, a lot of people use this corridor, uh, to get to the stadium, as well as to do some of their, uh, pregame and post -game activities, and so we ... we have emphasized that we want this project, all items, to be done by the end of August. There will be a 30 -day period in between the (mumbled) final completion. This is very typical on all of our projects. In this particular project, we require everything, all of the bid items, to be completed, but we still have that 30 -day period for the contractor to do some cleanup items or some small punch list items. We have specifically stated in the contract documents in the project manual, the plan notes, and specifications that any work after the substantive completion date, that'd be August 25t', it'll be limited to week days. No work will occur on home football game weekends, and after that August 25th date, the roadway and sidewalk must be fully opened to the traffic by pedestrians and vehicles. Our estimated construction costs of $525,000, again, that shows a lot of things that we've added into this project, um, those new discharge pipes, getting the pipes out from underneath that ... that building. Um, our original budget was $300,000. Uh, so you can show, I mean we're showing as staff that we really did try to figure out ways to make this reasonable. We looked at dividing it up into different, um, halves. We thought that that would be more disruptive to the corridor, to basically do half of the project one year and then a year or two later do the other half of the project, and so, uh, we decided to go forward with the... with the whole corridor, put in the new sewers, and then repave the corridor. I want to thank Anderson Bogert, who was our design consultant, um, that worked through many design changes and really went above and beyond to prepare and reprepare documents as this project evolved and as things changed on the project. So I really want to say a big thank you to all the staff that helped at Anderson Bogert, and uh, there's my contact information if people would like to get a hold of me about this project. So ... back to .... back to you, Mayor! Teague: Thank you, Joe. Council .... any questions for Joe? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 4 Thomas: I had, uh, one...a question on the, um, with the new ...street section, will the ... the existing poles no longer be in that west sidewalk? Welter: We are asking the contractor to keep those poles in ... in place during the construction and so we're not going to be moving the poles. We're going to try to keep those in place throughout the construction and the sidewalk would, um, roughly be in about the same place it's in today. Teague: So the cost went from 300,000 to 525 and that's not including, um, the underground work, um ... correct? Welter: That's correct. Yep, that's correct. Teague: And you mentioned that, um, in the future this can be done, what ... the work being done now doesn't preempt, you know, that from .... from being done in the future, I guess. My question would be, is staff planning to do this in the future or is there something that you need from Council, um, on ... on this matter? Welter: Well, we do have another project that is, um, on the CIP list, on the unfunded list at this point, for Brookland Park. That would be west of Melrose Court, south of this project corridor. So there would be an opportunity. That is intended to be a whole reconstruction. There are some storm water issues there and some, uh, sewer issues and, urn ... so that there would be a possibility maybe with that project to go back at that time and do that. Um .... at this point we ... we have not planned to do any, uh, underground location of the power lines, uh... but again, that's not something that we can't pursue in the future. Thomas: Is ... is the, uh, is the possibility of a, um, undergrounding funded by the property owners an option? Has that ever been done here? Welter: I'm not sure about that. I don't .... I don't know if we've ever done that before, and what that might look like, uh.... one of the things to consider is ... many of the properties along this corridor are owned, but, um, but not resided in by those owners. Uh, so I'm not sure how that would change that, um, conversation. If you were going through a more traditional residential neighborhood, you could get a lot more support maybe for an approach like that. But with many of the properties being leased out, rented out, I'm not ... I'm not sure how that would work, and how much, urn ... how much support you would get for that. Weiner: I wonder if you could describe the process that ... when you're going to put something on the CII' that you usually would go through in order to include This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 5 undergrounding of...of...of electrical wires generally, um, or if that's not ... maybe that's a question better, uh, answered by Geoff. I'm not sure. Welter: The... generally when a project goes into the CIP program, it's identified for its primary purposes. This project was identified to fix a very old sanitary sewer that had deficiencies. The sewer needs to be fixed. Um, other projects get put into the CIP to be a complete reconstruction of the corridor. Um, to ... to really look at this corridor to .... to reconstruct it was going to require extra right-of-way to be acquired, and that was evaluated actually in 2017 and 2018, and the issue with this corridor being so narrow, 25 -feet, um, is ... and ... and on both sides, both the east and west side of the roadway, um, there's quite a bit of change between the street level and the front door, the main entrances of the buildings. That there was a lot of, uh, issues, design issues, that were very hard to get over. Um, the... almost all of the properties on the west end were going to have to have retaining walls, um, the ... the front entrance walks, which almost every house has, were ... were going to be, uh.... uh, significantly impacted. The driveway grades were going to have to be, uh, changed quite a bit, and so as we looked at that, again, it just .... it just felt way outside of what the intended project was to be, which was to fix a sanitary sewer that needed to be fixed. Um, I don't know, Janice, if that answers your question, but that's the particular case on this project. Weiner: Um, that's really helpful. I guess what I'm sort of looking for is when ... when the City is .... in general looks at this, what ... how do they decide when they're going to, uh, bury the lines, because it's at our cost. I mean it sounds to me like what one of the things you're saying it sort of is part of the ... it has, it's normally is part of a complete reconstruction ... as well as these other issues that you're mentioning. Welter: Yeah, I think .... I think with a complete reconstruction, that's always ... and really, it's probably always the preferred option on every project. Um, unfortunately with this project, by the time we really figured out what needed to be done for the original intent of the project, you know, by the time ... and again, 20...2016 dollars it was $250,000. If you add 3% to that every year, then today's dollars that'd probably be closer to 300,000. So you add $300,000 to a $525,000 project and you're adding 30% on top of the project costs. Um, so ... and again, it's not that we .... it's not that we wouldn't as Engineering prefer the ... the lines to be buried as well. We would. Um, it just....it just didn't fit into the original concept of this project, um, but I would say yes. A complete reconstruction project's always going to look at that, um, and have that in mind that ... that the power lines, the ... the other private utilities, as well as the water and the sewers, the public utilities would all be looked at in a complete street reconstruction to evaluate what needs to change and what needs to be improved, and that's a little bit different This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 6 when you're just looking at trying to do a utility project. If you're just trying to replace the water mains, if you're just trying to replace the sanitary sewer, the storm sewer, that has a very different look to it. Taylor: Along the lines of Councilor Weiner's questioning, I mean obviously.... quite obviously this project needs to be done and I'm in favor of the project being done, uh, seeing the age, uh, that's shocking, uh, the age of this line, but that is an older part of the community (garbled) but I'm .... I'm disappointed in that phrase "in the future," uh, because we all know what that can possibly mean, and then you're talking about disruption, that this is going to be a very disruptive project. Well, you turn around and somewhere down the line need to disrupt it again to put those ... those power lines underground. That just doesn't make sense to me! It just doesn't seem logical, uh, but I'm wondering also along the lines of Janice's questioning, I mean do we put some kind of a placeholder in our budget, uh, that would fund that eventually, because it's only going to get more expensive, and my preference would be just to do it now and get it over with. Fruin: Yeah, if I could jump in here. I ... I think, um, you have to kind of back off, uh, back up and see a ... a bigger picture with this too. Um, you know, we're talking about, I don't know, maybe a block and a half reconstruction here at a quarter million dollars. You can imagine, there's probably lots of neighborhoods in town that would like to see their utility lines buried, and we would like to see those buried too, but you get into a .... a .... a scope of a ... of an issue with overhead utility lines. You're talking tens of millions of dollars, easily, across the .... across the, uh, the city. Um .... and ... and so and I think if you, you know, if the Council were to want to get more aggressive with burying utility lines, urn ... uh, I think you're going to want to be, uh, you know, develop some type of assessment, uh... uh, system for a utility line program like that. So, you know, this neighborhood would probably be a top candidate because poles are located, you know, in ... in conflict with pedestrian amenities. But you'd also want to look at, you know, what's the risk to the lines with stone damage, um, and ... and what are some of the other, um, concerns that those poles, uh, may have. So the ... the concern I have about, urn .... um, you know, immediately just saying `we'll go back in and do this,' is ... is, you know, you're probably going to .... you're probably going to easily spend not only the 300, but if you look at the public comments that you received, some of them are from .... areas outside of the ... this project area. So that $250,000 cost, which is now 300, is going to get to 400, 500, 600 by the time you're meeting everybody, and um, I just don't ... I just don't know that that's... that's going to ... to be the best approach. We do have an annual budget line for burying power lines. We combine them with ... with current projects that we have. Um, we typically focus on, uh, arterial, collector streets, where the risk of an outage is This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 7 greatest to the greatest number of people. Um, so you've seen that with Dubuque Street, with ... with Gilbert Street, with American Legion Road that's coming up. Those... those tend to be where we focus, um, again, I think if Council wants to get into a neighborhood system, we probably need to take a step back and think a little bit more systematically about how we want to go about doing that and how we're going to fund it. Dilkes: I would just add briefly that, um, the temporary... the easements that we needed for this project were acquired with the representation that this project would be done before the football season started. So we need to stick to that schedule at this point. Bergus: Geoff, just to follow up on, um, John Thomas' question about some kind of, um, assessment for the property owners. Joe, I appreciate what you're saying, that maybe there wouldn't be buy -in for that, but is there even a mechanism for that? Fruin: Um, I'm not aware of one. Uh, I'd have to do probably a little research unless Eleanor knows that question from past research, but I'm certainly not aware of, uh, an assessment on a ... on a .... utility line undergrounding project. Dilkes: Yeah, I mean the idea of doing a special assessment, which I don't think Iowa City's done in .... 40 years or something (mumbled) might be a possibility but there ... I'm not sure that that's a process that would be applicable when we're talking about contributing the cost of the ... of the undergrounding to the utilities. So something we'd have to look at. Bergus: Thank you. Welter: Then again, I can't talk to ... I would add on, I can't talk to, you know, necessarily every project in town, but it's ... it is a very busy corridor. So the other ...the other thing to consider is where are those underground lines going to go in this particular corridor. You've got fiber optic cables in ... on this side. You've got gas mains on the other side, um, so ... it's ... this particular corridor is very problematic because it's so narrow. It's such a tight corridor, um, and ... and how do you ... how do you do that and where ... where do you make everything fit. Not to say that that's impossible, not to say that, again, that that can't be done in the future, um, but it is a very complex, um, complicated corridor. Bergus: So in this one there's already undergrounded, for example, fiber where ... so it wouldn't be just taking everything off the poles and putting it underground. There's already some there? This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 8 Welter: Well if you take ... if you take the poles away, if you take the poles away, then everybody's got to find a space underground. So ... and everybody's got to find some place to go, and so there, um, there are some overhead, some underground utilities in this corridor, um, but again, anything that's up on the poles, if you take the poles off, they have to find a place as well. Um, and if it was a normal, more normal right-of-way, where you got some parkway and you got some areas to work with, uh, that gets ... there, those... discussions with all the utilities get a little bit easier. Bergus: Makes sense! Thank you. Thomas: One ... one other question I had would ... would be if the poles are going to remain, and, uh, remain in the same location in the sidewalk, do we have the minimum clearance on the sidewalk with respect to access (mumbled) an obstruction... which ... which would be the pole? Welter: John, we just talked about that yesterday a little bit more, and, uh, there ... the current existing situation, uh... and ... and the proposed situation would not necessarily be all that different, um, so we're not really putting in anything that's different than what it is today. Uh, to get that 4 -foot, um, that would be required for ADA, and is I think what you're referring to, um, it...it would be, um ... it would be very tight. There ... there could be some places where we're under 4 - foot. Thomas: My understanding is that, uh, at an obstruction, the minimum would be 3 -feet. Rather than, you know, the 4 -feet would be in a standard condition, but when you encounter a pole or something of that sort, my recollection was that you needed a minimum of 3 -feet at the obstruction. So I'm .... I'm sensing from what you just said that we have at least 3 -feet. Welter: I believe that we'll be ... we'll be pretty close to that, yeah. It'll be tight, but I don't ... I don't believe that we necessarily have existing conditions that are under that, and again, the proposed conditions that we're proposing are really not that much different than the existing conditions. It's always hard to guarantee that in the sense that ... um ... and there's... there's wildcards in all construction projects. So ... but the intention is not to make the situation any worse than it is at this point from, um, accessibility around those obstructions. Thomas: Okay, thanks! This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 9 Teague: All right. I'm going to ask if anyone from the public would like to address this topic. If so, please raise your hand. Welcome, Dan! And I ask that... yeah, welcome, Dan! Kauble: Hi, um, I am Dan Kauble and I live near the VA, and since tonight's agenda, um, is only focused on discussions about road and sewer repairs and it doesn't really have any other avenue for public comment, I think I'm going to be talking about sewers, and specifically I will be discussing the citywide sewer where advocates for racial justice are currently drowning in a political quagmire. I request that the City spend part of tonight's formal Council meeting focusing on repairing that sewer, and if it needs to be repaired much more than the others. In the wake of last week's vote to suspend the TRC, I have a few comments about how to make this ... the TRC, um, better and improve its future. Um, I would like to reiterate some of the points I made last week (both talking) Teague: Hey, Dan (both talking) Dan? Kauble: Yes? Teague: So this has to be related to the topic at hand. Kauble: Well I mean it's about sewers, so I mean it's ... I think that if you guys aren't allowing a public discussion for ...this is one of the most pressing issues facing the community, and I think that there has to be at some point tonight (mumbled) you guys should allow the public input on this, because I mean a lot of people, this is their reality, this is what they're fighting for. Everybody has points that they want to make about this. (both talking) Teague: Is this about (both talking) sewers? Kauble: Well, it's about the fact that the City is curren... I mean res... countless residents are .... are stuck in a sewer of racism. I mean, this city is a sewer to them because a lot of the injustices that (both talking) Dilkes: Mayor, this is not your main... Teague: Yes! Dan, thank you. I'm going to have to cut you off now, but thank you (both talking) Kauble: I ... I will.... This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021. Page 10 Teague: Anyone else like to address this topic? Seeing no one, I'm going to close the public hearing. Could I get a motion to approve please? 2. Consider a Resolution (Deferred from 3/16/21) Mims: So moved, Mims. Taylor: Second, Taylor (garbled) Teague: Council discussion? Mims: I'm in support of the project. I ... I certainly understand the concern and the desire to get all the utilities undergrounded. Um, and I ... but I think this represents an issue. I think as the City Manager laid out pretty well. This would be, um, this'd be a really expensive project, and it's one that will be wanted and desired across the community. So I think if we're going to take on that, um, attempt to underground our utilities, we really need to do it with a citywide, uh, mindset of how we're gonna work our way across the community and how we're going to prioritize what areas, and how we would get the funding to go with it. Otherwise I think ... it becomes who's .... who's the squeakiest wheel, um, in terms of getting these kinds of improvements in their neighborhood. Bergus: Yeah, I'm in favor of this project. I think it's unfortunate that the undergrounding can't occur in a reasonable way. I'm satisfied that staff did a lot of, um, trying to make that happen in a way that was feasible in this neighborhood. What really struck me was the narrowness of the total right-of-way, and given all the construction that's happening, um, without acquiring additional, you know, widening of that right-of-way, it ... I guess it .... it's very unfortunate, but it makes sense to me that we'll, um, make the situation as best we can even if we can't underground the utilities there. Teague: Any other comments? Roll call please. Motion passes 7-0. This represents only a reasonably accurate transcription of the Iowa City City Council special formal meeting of March 23, 2021.